By Eric Butler



This Ohio gone New York gone California gone Loco boy has been making art for a while. It seems as if Chris has been searching for the waves since he was a small kid in Columbus, eventually moving west to finish a degree and land a pretty decent job in UCLA. I was interested in his collage work he has done and wanted to learn more. Chris tells us about jamming out to Ray Charles, his sinuses exploding, and some sensible advice for upcoming artists and writers.



Chris: I was lucky to attend an extremely informal, arts- and literacy-centered elementary school (Indianola), very close to the campus of The Ohio State University. We had dance, art, drama and music sessions each week. (The music teacher knew Ray Charles, and he played at our school once. So did The Charlie Daniels Band!!!) And I read a great deal of fiction, especially authors like Lois Lowry, Ellen Raskin, Roald Dahl and Tove Jansson. I remember one sunny spring afternoon when the fraternity house across the street from my school was blasting "Sweet Home Alabama" from the rooftop. A bunch of 4th-graders went across the street, knocked on the door, and asked them to turn it down the music. I remember a lot of beer cans everywhere. It was great.

 



They're actually water soluble crayons. Very low tech and uncomplicated, just like me.

 



I have an administrative assistant job at UCLA, in the media relations office.

 



Lately I've been scouring the Salvation Army for hardback books published in the 1970s and early 80s. The illustrations and photographs appeal to me as jumping off points for collages, so I've had fun ripping the books apart. I also cut headlines and text from my old issues of LA Weekly, so I have a folder full of words, waiting to be used. Mixing images with words is purely instinctual; I don't think about what I'm doing to any great extent, and I try to assemble the piece quickly, before I can second guess myself. But I'm definitely interested in how the colors and textures play off each other, or how the jagged or clean the images are.

 



My educational background is in screenwriting and creative writing, and I've only been making art seriously since 2004. But as a kid, I remember being very exciting by illustrators like Ezra Jack Keats, Leo Lionni and Richard Scarry. And my number one influence was Trina Schart Hyman, who was the staff illustrator for Cricket Magazine in the late 1970s through most of the 80s. Her work absolutely did it for me. I also watched a lot of cartoons, especially Challenge of the Superfriends, Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids and really awful stuff like The Smurfs and Saturday Supercade. I loved it all; the combination of colors and storytelling was fascinating. And of course I also loved Atari and was a full participant in the arcade video game boom of the early 80s. More colors there.



I emailed one curator out of the blue, and after he looked at the images on my Web page, he expressed interest in giving me my first solo show. Those were all colored pencil portraits drawn from photographs of people I met on Myspace. Another friend forwarded me an email from Echo Curio (www.echocurio.com), and they've adopted me into their family. I've been in four shows there so far.

 



My sinuses are a mess.

 



I'm always in the mood. When I'm at work, I'm thinking about being home, either drawing or writing. If I'm not creating, my heart hurts, so I pretty much have no choice.

 



I've had six or seven short stories published in the last few years in various literary magazines across the country. I'll be querying literary agents very soon about my novel. And I'm co-writing a screenplay (after a considerable hiatus from that medium) with a friend of mine.



I usually write about survivors, people who're struggling to get by, financially and emotionally, so I'm attracted to the Appalachian, working class folks from Ohio. New York City was a constant adventure; you never knew what you were going to see just walking the five blocks to class. I saw a dead homeless man who'd frozen to death in Washington Square Park. I saw another man get hit by a taxi. I saw Matthew Broderick and Gregory Hines and once I followed Cher into the dry cleaners. But I grew tired of the anxiety and the stress of the city and decided to head West. Beach living is more my speed. I saw my first sea otter not too long ago, and it's little stuff like that that makes me happy.

 



The author saw my work on Myspace and offered me the job. I read the manuscript, made a list of recurring motifs, which included frigid weather, black eyes and beer, and jumped off from there.



Ha! Well, I've been interested in surf culture ever since I saw the "Hardy Boys Mysteries" episode Parker Stevenson and Shaun Cassidy go to Hawaii. Not many waves in Columbus, though, so I had to head west. My novel is set in the surf scene on the Great Lakes, and my favorite film is North Shore (1987). Stay loose, haole!





It's all about discipline. Don't just say you want to write or draw; make the time to do it and practice it, every day if possible. No excuses! And find a critique group with people who you trust will give honest, constructive, supportive feedback.

Mom, of course, And to my departed heroes: Raymond Carver and Trina Schart Hyman.


Check Chris out at here or here.